Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, GEO-BESTIARY: 30, by JAMES HARRISON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

GEO-BESTIARY: 30, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: How much better these actual dreams
Last Line: He's never heard except in the pulse of dreams.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Dreams; Hope; Nightmares; Optimism


How much better these actual dreams
than the vulgar "hoped for," the future's
golden steps which are really old
cement blocks stacked at a door that can
never open because we
are already inside.
Is all prayer just barely short of the lip
of whining as if, however things are,
they can't possibly be quite right
(what I don't have I probably should),
the sole conviction praying for sick children?
But true dreams arrived without being
summoned, incomprehensibly old and without
your consent: the animal that is running
is you under the wide gray sky, the sound
of those banal drumbeats is the heart's true reflection,
all water over your head is bottomless,
the sky above we've learned quite without limits.
Running, he wears the skins of animals
to protect his ass in the misery of running,
stopping at the edge of the green earth
without the fulsome courage to jump off.
He builds a hut there and makes the music
he's never heard except in the pulse of dreams.





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